


variables & constants

by polarisparker



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Healing, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 04:40:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18843832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polarisparker/pseuds/polarisparker
Summary: Peter Parker is a superhero. Everything is different, but not everything has to change.Endgame spoilers.





	variables & constants

Peter Parker is a superhero. Every night his metal suit molds around his body, as fluid and natural as a second skin, an exoskeleton. Flexible plates of iron slide against each other, practically frictionless, with every jump from rooftop to rooftop. He’ll leave robbers dangling from jewelry shop ceilings, lower cats from trees, web over the eyes of creepy men with low whistles: Peter Parker is a superhero, and it is an unpredictable life, a wild one.

But some things stay constant. He would say most things stay the same, but with Tony gone, each blink of his eyes has started carrying a different weight from one day to the next. Peter never knows which days he’ll hurt more, or less, or not at all. But he knows this:

He knows that on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, he wakes up at 7:00 AM to go to school. Eight hours of lectures, worksheets, labs, and projects fill his mind to the brim with equations and facts and figures. At lunch he sits next to Ned and across from MJ, listening to them babble about Flash being a dick or Star Wars being epic or, really, nothing at all. Sometimes he speaks, too, but they make sure he knows that he doesn’t have to. He’s content with listening anyway, for now, but his voice would be crackly from disuse if he didn’t spend his evenings conversing with cops and criminals alike.

He knows that every Friday afternoon after school Pepper Potts invites him for tea. She always makes him a different herbal sort, with flowers or fruit, sugar or honey. Her own preferred beverage is a chai tea, something she picked up from a friend on a business trip. (Peter finds it much too bitter.) The two of them make small talk about school and the company, or about how Peter’s latest work in the Stark labs is coming. Sometimes they just sit in vague silence; it used to be awkward, but Peter has come to appreciate the way Pepper’s features soften and she plays with the ends of her hair as she loses herself in thought. He’s used to her being stiff and composed, whether she’s wearing a suit, _the_ suit, or no suit. In these gentle moments, he watches her relax in his presence, and it’s as peaceful as early morning car rides with Aunt May or curling against Ned’s shoulder on the bus. She ruffles his hair like an aunt, and kisses his forehead like a mother, and scrawls the name of her latest tea on his arm like a friend.

(When he tells Pepper he loves her, her eyes go impossibly soft. He feels weightless.)

He knows that Morgan almost always has a new drawing for him, and he almost always chokes up when he sees the baby blue lightning she draws around an electric blue arc reactor. He has one of the drawings hanging in his room right above his bed, one where the reactor is the moon and the sky has eyes instead of stars. Peter still hasn’t quite figured out what it means, but he’s sure his high school art teacher would find it meaningful and abstract beyond the breadth of any five-year-old’s intent. He’s tried asking Morgan, but her attention span is shorter than she is, something Peter always insists “should be impossible!”

He knows that Ned, MJ, and Shuri spend their Saturday afternoons at the lab with him, testing new web fluid compositions with the excitement of children. Their latest objective is to somehow weave vibranium into the webbing, for no apparent reason other than “it’ll be really tough and cool” (Ned’s words, not Shuri’s). But despite the pointlessness of it all, Peter needs a challenge. And only during those moments in the lab, with his mind consumed and working overtime, does he manage to step away from his memories and laugh freely because “holy  _shit_ , you just made your metal-webs _fre_ _eze_ , what the  _fuck_ ” (MJ’s words, this time).

He knows that Sundays are May Days, where he and his loving, faithful, wonderful aunt curl up in the couch and watch Uncle Ben’s favorite movies from when they wake up at noon to when they fall asleep on the sofa at midnight. They eat fistfuls of Froot Loops from the box, and when that runs out they go out for cheeseburgers at Tony’s favorite joint. Peter would expect it to hurt, but it gets easier with time, and May’s protective arm barring him from the world does more for him than he would have thought. It feels almost wrong that a slender lady with lenses larger than her arm muscles is shielding him, a _superhero_ , from the universe, but at the same time it makes perfect sense. Aunt May was a hero before he ever was.

He knows she hears him tell her so under his breath, every night before he leaves to patrol. He thinks that’s the only reason she hasn’t stopped him yet.

He doesn’t know that the real reason she lets him go is the little smile he wears every time that suit closes around him. It’s small, but it’s real, as real as the one he gives Morgan every time he collects a drawing, or the one he gives Pepper every time he sips her tea, or the one he gives Ned every time their fingers tangle together. Of course he smiles. How can he not? Once he’s in that suit, Peter isn’t Peter. Once he’s in that suit, Peter Parker is a superhero.


End file.
